Film Finders: Exploring Special Topics

As public schools across the country struggle for funding, complicated by the impact of poverty and politics, some question the future and effectiveness of public schools in the U.S. Education, Inc. examines the free-market and for-profit interests that have been quietly and systematically privatizing America's public education system under the banner of "school choice.

A documentary navigating a typical day in the Pasadena Unified School District, a racially and economically diverse community in Southern California. Teachers, students, principals, volunteers and many others reveal their unique involvement in what makes a public school district function.

A history of America's public school system.

Discover how the new science of learning can help reimagine the future of education for all children in an age of information, rapid innovation, and globalization.

Frontline presents two films examining the realities of education in America.

A documentary examining the history of U.S. education, revealing the growing shortcomings of conventional education methods in today's innovative world. The film explores compelling new approaches that engage students, energize teachers, and lead to deep, retained learning.

This documentary takes a look at public education in the United States through the stories of five students such as Emily, a Silicon Valley eighth-grader who is afraid of being labeled as unfit for college, and Francisco, a Bronx first-grader whose mom will do anything to give him a shot at a better life.

Race to Nowhere is a documentary that highlights the unintended consequences of our pressure-cooker culture and education system. The film challenges our deepest-held assumptions about how we can best prepare young people for the future.

Schools that Change Communities profiles a diverse group of public schools that are successfully creating higher achieving students in a different way -- by turning the communities where they live into their classrooms. The film re-imagines what education can be, visiting K-12 public schools in five states across America that are engaging students in learning by solving real-world problems in a variety of communities.

The East Baton Rouge Parish School District was forced to desegregate its schools in 1981 after a 25-year legal fight. But now, frustrated over the district's many low-performing schools, a group of mostly white, middle-class parents and business leaders are trying to break away and form a new city with its own separate schools, mirroring similar breakaway movements in cities around the country that critics say are reversing hard-fought civil rights gains.

This set of videos shows typical days in preschools in China, Japan, and the United States, with narration tracks that present explanations and reflections of early childhood educators from each country.

This film features five young teachers as they fight the real fight: educating our children, one child at a time. Shows the human side of the story, revealing all the determination and commitment it takes to survive in America's toughest school systems..

The "blue eyed/brown eyed" exercise was originally developed for an all white third grade class to give them some idea of racial prejudice, dividing the class on the basis of eye color and subjecting the blue-eyed members to a regime of intense discrimination.

Paints a portrait of the children of Stanton Elementary School in North Philadelphia, an inner-city neighborhood where 90% of the students live below the poverty line. As seen through the viewpoint of principal Deanna Burney, this shows Stanton as underfunded, understaffed, and filled with children struggling to overcome their difficulties, the only hope for their future survives in the success of their education.

Chronicles a year at Annapolis East Elementary in Middleton, Nova Scotia. Thanks to an anti-violence program, bullying and fighting have become a rarity. Over the course of the year, it becomes clear that peace is hard work -- but well worth the effort.

The film documents the unusual work of a school teacher, Albert Cullum, who embraced creativity, and who sought to foster his students' motivation and self-esteem through the use of poetry, drama and imaginative play.

A documentary film that tells the coming-of-age story of public speaker and feminist Shelby Knox, a teenager who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools of Lubbock, Texas.

This film follows 6 students from Lincoln Alternative High School in Walla Walla, Washington. The principal and teachers embraced a non-punitive, trauma-informed model of teaching and discipline in order to counteract the chaos and violence present in the school.

Story of the transformation of a high school girl from a problem student to a motivated and self-confident young woman through her school's implementation of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and a youth-directed planning process called RENEW (Rehabilitation for Empowerment, Natural supports, Education, and Work).

At the Greenwood School in Putney, Vermont, boys from ages 11-17 with learning differences, are encouraged each year to memorize the Gettysburg Address. As the students come to terms with the address's message of freedom, equality and democracy, they grow in self-confidence as they confront past failures and humiliations.

While 48 percent of Mexican-American students currently drop out of high school, Tucson (Ariz.) High School's Mexican American Studies Program has become a national model of educational success. However, Arizona lawmakers have shut the program down because they believe the students are being indoctrinated with dangerous ideology and embracing destructive ethnic chauvinism.

Chronicles the struggles and triumphs of the first year of the Bronx Center for Science & Mathematics, an innovative public high school set in NYC's South Bronx. The personal stories of this school's students and staff call to mind larger themes of school reform and the need for educators, parents, and policymakers to prioritize the transformation of the public school system so that all children can receive a quality education.

Three seniors at Brooklyn high schools are determined to get their entire classes to college, even though they aren't even sure they are going to make it there themselves. They are working as college counselors in their three schools because many of their friends have nowhere else to turn for support.

This documentary, set on four different college campuses, looks at how our national commitment to provide every qualified student, regardless of economic status, an opportunity to go to college has weakened and how some students seem to "coast" their way to a diploma without really learning much.

Is college worth the cost? As tuition spirals upward and student debt passes a trillion dollars, students and parents begin to wonder if college is worth the expense

Follows four undocumented students who hope to attend college in their home state of Georgia but in 2010, the state banned undocumented students from its top public universities. The film documents these young people as they work to continue their education with the help of Freedom University, modeled on the freedom schools of the Jim Crow South.

Higher education is a $400 billion industry fueled by taxpayer money. Frontline looks at for-profit colleges and universities and how the way they use money affects the education they provide.

Provides students & educators with up to date information on the critical issues of Sexual Assault, Legal Consent, and Bystander Intervention. Interviews with students include male and female survivors, heterosexual and LGBT communities, plus randomly selected focus groups.

A teacher in England abandons the traditional curriculum of education in dealing with a class of students rejected by other schools.

A dramatization of the story about the struggle of a Boston teacher, Annie Sullivan, to communicate with and teach the deaf, blind, and mute child, Helen Keller.

Kicked out of his band and desperate for work, Dewey impersonates a substitute teacher and turns a class of fifth grade high-achievers into rock and rollers.

A frustrated composer comes to realize that his real passion is teaching and that his legacy is not a truly memorable piece of music, but the generations of young people whose lives he affects.

A small Tennessee town gained national attention in 1925 when a biology schoolteacher was arrested for violating state law and teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in the classroom.

Roberta Gaspari is a talented violinist with two young sons to care for, decides to take her skills to underprivileged East Harlem children. When school funding for the project is cut, Roberta takes on the system, culminating in a student performance that exceeds expectations, playing with the world's greatest violinists at Carnegie Hall.

A true story about a teacher, Erin Gruwell, in a racially divided school who gives her students the assignment of keeping journals about their own lives. This eventually bonds them together and pushes racial rivalries aside. Draws heavily from the published journals of the real students themselves.

The story of Jaime Escalante, a math teacher at East Los Angeles' Garfield High School, who pushes and inspires 18 inner-city Hispanic students who were struggling with math to become math whizzes.

An English professor, John Keating, inspires his students to live life to the fullest, exclaiming "Carpe Diem, lads! Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary!" The charismatic teacher's emotionally charged challenge is met by his students with irrepressible enthusiasm-- changing their lives forever.